Time capsules, treasure chests, and garbage cans

They're all pretty much indistinguishable to me.  As you may have picked up on, I'm not very well-practiced when it comes to keeping a workspace organized.  Really, the same can be said for my living space, since I don't usually delineate between the two.  Generally, I end up doing a purge every few months to clear out things that I don't need around anymore.  More often than not, these are event-driven, meaning that they're a reaction to some unexpected circumstance that's usually seen as being some flavor of crisis.

When these situations come up, I start by gathering up all the stuff that I've been tired of seeing, then throwing it out.  A lot of times I don't put as much importance in whether I actually should be throwing it out as I do in if I want to throw it out.  Like when I throw all my dishes away every couple years instead of washing them.

Once I've cleared some space, I collect everything I've been working on since the last event, which is followed by shoving it into a box or pile of some sort.  Since I'm rarely working on a single task at any given period, these boxes and piles can make for interesting snapshots of what was going on when the object wad had been formed.  Today I got to crack open a number of these easter eggs as I searched for the missing heater box parts. 

So let's take a look at what I unearthed:

Here's the hat Gremlin came with.  I'm hoping to be able to make an adapter for the Weber so that I can use it again.

A Nova steering wheel that I used for a bit, since it was a smaller diameter than the original wheel.  The larger wheel was a problem for me when getting in and out of the seat, since the Gremlin didn't come with a tilt column.

The starter that Gremlin had when I bought it.  This was a really interesting find, since I could check the drive gear teeth for signs of damage.

Looks like the teeth are fine.  A hair smooth where the reliefs are to allow the teeth to mesh, but nothing that looks damaged at all.  I take this to mean that the tooth decay that prompted the repair I did recently to be a recent issue.  I may keep this and rebuild it so that I'll have a backup on hand.

Sun visors from a Concord.  I pulled these a few years back with the intention of using them in the Gremlin.  I later found a pair in another Concord.  Those came with naugahyde instead of the thin fabric, so I'll be using those in the Gremlin.  Since Eagle's only visor was completely trashed, I went ahead and installed them.  They're an exact match, and Eagle's been overdue for a treat.

Of all the things I found (and there's a ton of interior stuff I forgot I had that isn't being covered here), I was most excited to find the scrap of plastic sitting on top of the heater core in this picture.

See, one of the main reasons this rebuild was back-burnered a couple years ago was because I couldn't find that damn part.  I searched everywhere I could think of, but came up with nothing until today.  Part of the problem was that I thought it was a metal part instead of plastic.  The other part was that I had no recollection of the big plastic tub-capsule full of parts that I stowed in the car hole, behind the AMX. 

Anyway, as shown in the picture, the heater box is near done.  I would've finished, but I ran out of rivets.  I just found the pack I have here at the house, so I should be able to button that up, install the box, blower motor, and heater core, get the cooling system hoses connected, and start installing wiring.  Woo!

Cementing bonds after fixed contact

So I've been doing something I have no business doing.  That something is being in the same room as this.

And also this.

Case in point: I didn't think to use gloves, so my hands look like I've contracted some exotic disease, fit to be showcased by the media as this season's hot new pandemic.  I'm probably better off, though -- the only thing more horrible than bare hands and glue is gloves and glue.

You may be wondering why in the hell I'd be using contact cements for anything related to my exhaust; I'd wonder that, too.  Fact is, I'm not working on the exhaust right now.  I'm not even talking about the exhaust right now.  I'll talk about the exhaust when I'm ready to talk about the exhaust.  Until then, it doesn't exist.


I said I don't want to talk about it.

No, the contact cement and it's propellant aspect are being used to finish something I started working on looooooong before I even started thinking of starting this page.  Probably close to two years ago.  That is this:

This is a pile of garbage.  Well, let me take that back -- it was a pile of garbage, but I stripped it down and painted it after removing the rust and rodent remnants that it contained.  Prior to that, it was a heater box. So while it's no longer garbage, it still has the same utility as if it were.

The rebuild kit I bought for this was of respectable quality, and I can only assume it's improved from when I bought it.  The weak point, however, is in the documentation.  Despite that, there is an incredibly useful step that I had ignored in my haste to make a mess (or "fix" the heater box, as I said at the time): take a buttload of pictures before and during teardown.

Even if I had done that, it was two phones ago and an age before I decided to put my neurotic clumsiness out there for the world to have the option of seeing, so any pictures I'd have taken wouldn't be any use to me anyway.  I have the service manual, of course, though I haven't found the chapter on "How to fix being a dumbass and tearing your heater box apart before putting it in a tub for over a year".  Yet.

What I have found is that AMC thought the Pacer and Matador sections of the chapter on heaters needed to have fully-detailed, exploded diagrams of their respective heater box assemblies, while the section covering the Hornet-chassis models could make due with a mostly-black picture of one side of the assembly for those applications.  I'm hoping that the parts catalog I have at the house will be a little more help.

Regardless, I'm doing what I can with what I have available, and right now that means smearing and spraying glue all over my person and getting what I can on the sealing foam and metal surfaces.  I also get to reassemble the box, which introduced me to peel rivets.  They're pretty neat.  It's like a jack nut crossed with a pop rivet, but none of the dickery.

But don't let my complaining fool you, because I still managed to get the better part of this stuff reassembled. 

If you're wondering what's going on with the worse part of it, since the better is assembled, well. . .  I'll let you know.  When I *ahem*. . .  Well, when I find it.

If you don't fit in, just get a hammer

Still working on the exhaust.  Yep.  Same exhaust that was supposed to be done yesterday.  Ran into a new set of fitment problems that stemmed from my impromptu pipe stands causing improper alignment.  Since most of my time lately has been within a couple feet of scrap metal mountain, I just reached in the pile and used the first pieces of steel I grabbed to make a hat for a bottle jack.  Now it holds one end of the exhaust for me, while the
trans jack that's been having an extended stay at the shop holds the other.  This allowed me to put the sidepipe fully in-place as it should be once completely installed.  Well, after I modified the 90 that attaches to the muffler inlet, that is.

Know that I'm being very generous towards myself by describing the act as "modifying".  What I really mean to say is that I made some cuts in the pipe where it failed to clear the rocker pinch weld, hammered the hell out of it, then welded the cuts back up.  See, I eventually came to the realization that "shut up and make it work" is the name of the game at this point.

On that note, I'll be signing off now for food and rest.  I have to redo the hanger hooks I had made during the time I thought things were fitted correctly, but was very wrong.

Like pork fat on a camera lens

When I try to look back at any point over the past 3 days -- even as recent as 5 minutes ago -- the image isn't "blurry", or "hazy", but smeared.  There are a couple exceptions, like the hyper-detailed and slow-motion recollection of when my shitty vise decided it was tired of holding the red candy iron I was hammering and tossed it directly at my face.   Though I managed to dodge the hot steel, the experience left a mark.  My relationship with the vise is now troubled, at best.

If the past three days were headcheese (and there's no saying they weren't) then the distinct memories are the tiny, delicious pork bits suspended in the greyish gelatin mass.  So I guess I'm saying that these days were tasty and I don't regret eating them.  Still don't want to do it everyday.

On that note, the exhaust is nearly done.  Had a little setback when I ran out of wire, but I spooled back up and ended up knocking out everything except the connectors that link the sidepipes and the rest of the exhaust, and a couple of the hangers.  Reason for that was less due to time and more due to the fact that I realized where I was going to attach them would've been a bad idea.

Once I finish up with the exhaust tomorrow, I'll have every one of the vehicle's systems present and installed to some degree.  I could actually go nuts and start it up at that point, but I'm going to stay focused and get the cleanup work done.  By that I mean backtracking to take care of the remnants of work needing to be done that aren't strictly cosmetic; heater box, connecting interior harnesses, that kind of thing.  Just about all of those tasks are halfway done or more already.

I think I'm going to head to the deli.

Cooperate, damnit!

So while everyone else was experiencing automotive hell today (friend's trans blew a seal somewhere in the vast expanses if the Dakota territories, and my neighbor's Subaru keeps eating fusible links), I somehow managed to get some headway made on my stuff once I did what I could to help both folks out (not much on the trans; my arms aren't long enough. I've pretty much just been giving troubleshooting suggestions and a resource to bounce observations off of with the Subaru).

Today was a day of minor compromises, a slight setback, and a couple moments where I felt my stomach pack up and move in with my feet.  Lucky for me, those guys don't get along at all, so my gut would show back up and apologize before doing the whole routine all over again (kinda like a girlfriend I had years ago).

The compromises centered around how many 90s I was going to end up using after surveying the space under the car from yet another angle, and whether it's really wise for me to spend my time making and welding pie cuts for each of them when I have an actual bundle of unused Jeep exhaust pipes tied together and propped up in one of my metal piles. 

The pipes being crush-bent was my main reason for deciding against using any of those pipes in the first place once the actual exhaust construction started.  That decision was made before I became aware of how much larger than necessary the 2" pipes were (I think?  Not going to go back and check).  Basically, I'm not going to be running a risk of introducing too much restriction by using crushed pipes.  Also, I doubt that any impedance that results from using them would be worse than what would come from me having to pile filler wire into the burn-through and pinhole voids permeating the spiderweb of metal that I would produce by trying to do the slice and stack.

So I hacked the exhaust pipes apart and collected the 90s.

The setback came in the form of the 90s that came with the side pipes being wayyyyyyyy too damn long for me to use them as-is.  If I laid them where they would be placed on the vehicle, there'd be maybe a foot of space between them.  Aside from minor things like the subframe rails being in the way if I don't want to drag the pipes on the ground, it's just too damn much 3" pipe.  Ideally, there'd be no 3" pipe at all, but this is what I've got and I'm gonna have to make it work until I have a grown-up's exhaust system in place.

All of the clearance issues I was somehow only just identifying made me fear that the pipes just weren't going to cut it and I would be totally stuck unless I ended up making my own glasspacks.  That's when my gut checked out and hit the floor.  Then I replayed my thoughts in my head, or more accurately, two words from my thoughts: "cut it".

So I'm hacking part of the sidepipes apart and shortening the 90s.

I also spent some time getting some 1/2" round stock bent in preparation of welding it on as hanger bars.

When I do the torch and bend, I have to restrain myself to avoid being overcome by the urge to touch the red part (just for a second!).  Every.  Single.  Time.  It's only a matter of time before my sense is asleep on watch and my stupidity sees the opening to grab hold of that glow candy.  I just hope I don't bite it when that day comes.

Bending steel with your mind

Without bothering to look back at my last post, I can only imagine that it became a little incoherent by the end.  That's why I'm doing this write up that should (hopefully) be clearer in how I formed my exhaust hanger bushing sleeves using only a pipe nipple.  And other tools I already hand on hand.  The nipple was actually the most important player in the whole process, though.  Let's check it out!

First off, I started with making a tool to seat the end of the bar stock I was going to be rolling.  I picked up a 3/4" pipe nipple, since I estimated it to be the correct size needed to give the sleeve a 1" ID.  If you intend to play along at home, please be aware that you will need a different diameter pipe to achieve that result. 

I ground flats on opposite sides of the pipe, then set a point that was vaguely middleish on one of the newly planed faces.  This was to mark where the slot was to be cut for my bar stock to seat. 

Using a cutoff disc on the die grinder, I carefully ground out a slot that was intended to be uniform and thin enough to only allow the bar stock a snug fit as it passed through.  I took my time and periodically tested with a square, deburred end of the bar, and immediately stopped grinding as soon as the needed fit was achieved.  With the slot ground out of one of the pipe's flat sides, I drilled to holes clear through the pipe at opposite sides of the slot.  The finished result looks like this:

Also needed is piece of angle iron that's several inches longer than the pipe.  Set the pipe in the angle iron with the holes centered on the bend in the angle, then drill corresponding holes in the angle iron.  This should allow you to bolt the pipe down into the angle recess.  I'll have a picture of the assembly further down.

Having finished making my rolling tool, I determined how long a piece of flat bar would be needed by using these  dimensions:

- Bushing OD: 1"
- Bar stock (thickness): 1/8"
- Desired sleeve OD: 1-1/4"
(bushing OD + (bar thickness x 2) = an expected ID that will fit the bushing.  It won't.  More on that later.)
- Mounting tab: arbitrary.  Enough to have excess when fitting to underside of vehicle.
- Brake tab: variable.  Dependent on squareness of end, how even surface is of bar.

A sleeve with a 1-1/4" OD has a circumference equal to just under 4", so rounding up, I knew I needed at least that much, plus some extra to grab hold of, and a little more to put bolts through when I was done.  This is the end result:

Since the grabbing end was variable length, I wasn't able to mark out my 4" length until  I set the end of my bar in the pipe and marked exactly where it met the pipe surface.  The extra metal up to that mark is my grabbing end (referred to from here as "brake tab") and is sacrificial.  It will be broken off once the metal is rolled enough to allow it to be finished into a properly dimensioned sleeve.  Here is the stock seated in the tool:

After making the first mark, the additional lengths were added as shown above.  The 4" for the sleeve was marked incrementally, since I would be scoring the stock at those points to create relief channels to make the bending easier.

The next picture shows the bar stock in the tool, then chucked into the vise so that I could begin cold bending it.

Once I reached end of travel as shown, I released the vise, then rotated the tool towards me before clamping it back down, like so:

Tightening the vise can allow you to do a fair amount of the bending without much extra effort.  This process was repeated until it was no longer practical to keep trying to roll it this way, at which point the assembly was bolted to the angle iron.

From here, you pretty much do the same as with the vise, except instead of tightening vise jaws, you steadily and evenly tighten each bolt until you've reached end of travel.  Unbolt, rotate, and repeat until it's not practical to do anymore.

This is about where I was once the point of being impractical was reached.  From there, I chucked the assembly into a vise and used a MAPP torch to heat the bar where it began drifting away from the pipe surface.  Once the metal was solidly orange in that area, I clamped some vise grips on the free end of the stock and continued curling it.

It's worth noting at this point that the section that will serve as the mounting tab is probably significantly arched.  Don't worry about it.  That will be flattened out when the final shaping is done.

Curl, heat, bend, etc until you have nearly curled the bar around enough to contact itself.  There should be a gap around 1/4" or so.  You'll be able to see that the relief cut made for the bending tab is showing signs that the metal is fatigued from being worked, and will break soon. 

At this point, feel free to take a couple cracks at that point with a cold chisel to break the brake tab and free your tool.

It appears that my phone didn't want to save the picture of what the stock looks like at this point, but it will more or less look like a numeral '6'.  If it looks like a '9', throw it away and start over, or turn it upside down. 

From here, you're just going to be closing the gap.  Use whatever tools you have available to compress the roughly circle shape into a less roughly circle shape.  What you're shooting for is the newly created end that the brake tab broke off from to meet the surface of the bar stock.  You want the contact point to be as close to the final mark of the 4" length as possible.

It doesn't matter at this point if it's out of round (it will be).  Once that gap is closed, drop a couple tack welds to keep it in place before uncompressing it.  Make sure that these are solid tacks, or they'll pop once things are loose.

At this point, you may be thinking that the ID of this proto-sleeve looks a fair bit bigger than 1".  That's because it was.  I saw early on with with first sleeve that the 3/4" ID pipe nipple wasn't going to give me the results I was after.  I rummaged around in Eagle and found a set of shackle bushings for an IH Scout that were large enough to eyeball that they'd fit, so I used those instead.

Now that you have your general shape secured, run a bead down the crevice where the outside surface of the sleeve and the mounting tab meet (or kinda meet, if that's the case, but NOT in the ID of the sleeve, or you're going to be doing a lot of grinding to get the bushings to fit).

With the piece welded together, you can start shaping it.  Start by flattening out the mounting tab.  This will help round the sleeve out.  With the mounting tab flattened out, start hammering or compressing the high points of the sleeve.  Use heat if needed.  Get it round enough that you have a snug fit for your bushings.  This isn't a tight tolerance part.  It doesn't have to be pretty. When it reaches the point of clearly functional, you're good to go.

I missed the mark a little with the second piece while I was closing the gap, which left me with a corner edge on the interior surface that interfered with the bushing clearance.

No big deal.  I just used a carbide burr in the die grinder to give it the old "port & polish".  Here's the resulting pair of hanger sleeve bracket things:

No bolt holes in the mounting tabs yet, since I need to check under the vehicle for best placement.  I'll follow up with how I'm making the hanger arms here in a bit.

That thing where you see faces in things.

You know what I mean?

All

Damn

Day

And even a couple days ago.  Ladies as gentlemen, it is my privilege, pleasure, and honor to introduce the one and only, the cold and lonely, the holy, mole-y, prime bologna,

Fart
Pipe
Pete!

That makes a lot of unexpected visitors. At least for me, anyway.

It's cool, though -- I can deal with seeing imaginary faces that are friendly for a change.  Especially since these can be photographed.

Despite what it might look like, I haven't been screwing around by making metal "sculptures" all day.  With the exception of Fart Pipe Pete, these were taken during the course of the latest phase of exhaust development.  Let me get you caught up real quick:

When we last saw our adventurer, he was plumb tired of plumbing the depths of his car's plumbing.  Terribly terribly welded plumbing.

The driver's side was run out as far as it would go without needing the sidepipe to be installed, while the right side needed a total 90° bend and run to the flex pipe for it to be at the same point as it's peer.  I have the pie cuts sliced, diced, and prepped for  welding, then set aside so I could make more cutgrindnoise.

Got the measurements to find the length of straight pipe needed after the bend, got it whipped out and welded up with the flex section, then determined that I needed to get the hangers squared away.  Without them I wasn't going to be able to keep the pipe runs square, and I'll be damned if I'm going to invite chances to cut and reweld stuff after I think I've got it all figured out.  That kind of thing doesn't need an invitation.  It invites itself.

Since I'm not PUTTING GOD DAMNED LAG SCREWS THROUGH MY FLOOR, I've got to use a different hanger design for my pipes.  Since I have no end of poly bushings from my rear suspension madness, I decided to crib the design used by the burrito supreme.  Here's a section of pipe from a fatty wagon that shows how they did it, Chrysler style.

Forgot to get a picture of the hanger mount, but it's basically the same thing as my shackle hangers.

I've got plenty of bushings, u channel, and round bar stock, all in compatible dimensions, to do this and not have to buy hangers.  The alternative would be to pay way too much for pre-made parts, then put in the same amount of effort to make them work for my vehicle as it would take to make some from scratch (scrap).

I wanted to split the difference and pick up some 1" ID tube, then cut segments of that to use for the bushing sleeves.  Well, guess what local steel stock sellers (with a storefront) don't sell?  Yep, the ointment was onioned, so I had to figure out a solution with no appropriate sleeve material and only 2 hours of power tool time left.

This is the result:

I'm really, really pleased with this, considering I don't usually come up with on-the-fly solutions that do anything but waste time and money.  It took me getting some 1/8" bar stock for the sleeves and a 3/4" black oxide pipe nipple to use as a mandrel.  The only other stuff I needed was in the shop, either as available stock or piled trash.

The 3/4" nipple was chosen for its OD matching that of the bushings I planned to use.  As mentioned, the nipple was used as a mandrel, so the plan was to cut a slot in it to fit the bar stock inside, then basically roll the bar stock over the nipple until I had something like what I ended up with.  Knowing it wouldn't be as easy as it sounded, I made sure to keep time and number of objects needed for tooling and materials as low as possible.  That way I'd still be in a reasonable spot when stuff went off the rails like always.

[NOTE: This is the point where I fell asleep while writing.  I'll finish the description of how to do this stuff when I write my next update.]

Bad pictures of bad welding

Alright, so I think the (vehicle) left down pipe is shown pretty clearly, but not the right.  Kind of a bummer, since it's the right that was such a curly, winding beast and probably ate up about 75% of the time spent on this so far.

You may notice that our helpful speciality tool is keeping the left pipe in place.  That's because I can't get the pipe oriented as it fits when totally fastened in place.  That's because I somehow managed to lose one of it's two manifold bolts.

That's all for now. Time to take a nap for a couple hours.

Lord of This World

A carmine demon creeps and crawls over the face of the Earth, observing no border or boundaries (or maybe just hangs around some aisles in various flavors of cheap tool depots), waiting for it's chance to seduce your mind with tantalizing offers of power and success. 

The lies it offers are bold and powerful, unbelievable to the rational mind, and so alluring that sense and experience are crippled against rebuffing the calls that assure you of "up to 10X faster material removal when compared to standard grinding wheels."

I spent easily 3 goddamned hours longer removing weld garbage using one of those friggin' flap discs yesterday than it would've taken me if I had thought to use a grinding wheel.  Total waste of time.  Sure, I'm partly to blame for giving marketing garbage a chance, but I think all regular users of power tools are constantly looking for that next little trick to give them an edge.  You know -- like performance tuners, or drug-addicted athletes.

Today's first round of grinding saw me removing material in about 1/3 the time as yesterday by using a grinder wheel to hog and a flap disc to finish, as usual.  The downside, however, is I totally drained both available battery packs in that span of time, just grinding, whereas I only did one recharge cycle all day yesterday and made heavy use of the angle and die grinders, as well as the bandsaw.

This doesn't come as a surprise, since the mass of a flap disc is considerably less than a grinding wheel, meaning more work has to be done by the grinder's motor to get that sucker spinning.  Working harder means the motor draws a greater amount of current.  It also gets hotter.  Getting hotter means the motor's internal resistance gets higher, which means, yep -- it needs more electrons to do the same amount of work and eats the battery as quickly as the power supply circuit will allow.

Now here's the part where things get tricky: if you're using air or (corded) power tools, it's kind of a no-brainer situation.  You don't need to even bother with any tonic to boost your grind time performance.  Use a grinding wheel and be on your way. 

It may not be that simple when using battery power, though.  Consider a scenario where a job getting done faster doesn't outweigh needing to recharge your battery.  It might be beneficial to spend extra minutes/hours on grinding something if it means you can still use your impact when you're done.  Something worth considering at the yard, roadside, or asbestos caverns.

I'm curious as to which has the greater impact on battery consumption with my tools.  I assumed it would be the act of spinning up the wheel to operating speed, since it takes more energy to get something moving than to keep it going.  Battery use seemed to be the same, even when making it a point to minimize spin-up cycles.  Either way, I don't really care enough to actually get scientific on this and doing boring stuff like "measuring" and "maintaining consistency".

I'm just going to chalk it up to electricity being weird today.  Even the welder's hotter than it was yesterday.  I keep burning the shit out of myself and catching things on fire.  Yeah, that's gotta be it.  Something funky in the electricity coming from the zap factory today.

(I'll have some exhaust update pics up later tonight.)

Ultrastition: LARPing meaning from daily life

I think it's only natural for people to come up with small personal rituals and superstitions over the course of their lives.  A lot of them can be handy little tools to bolster confidence and reassure oneself in times of stress or doubt.  I like to think that I have developed a fairly extensive toolset when it comes to this kind of gris-gris -- it's actually a deeply developed hobby of mine.

In case you don't have the slightest clue what I'm talking about, let's take a look at some omens, curses, and other elements of juju that I look out for.

1. "Is it for sale?", or "I'll buy that from you right now.  How much do you want?"

A terrible, potent curse to lay on someone with an old vehicle that is not being advertised for sale, especially if it is their daily-driver.  Assaulting the owner of the car with these questions is sure to bring them misfortune, most likely related to mechanical failure, a short period of time after your offer has been declined.

If you are the recipient of this curse, I have bad news: the only way to break it is to negotiate with the awful fucker that has hexed you and sell them the car.  While no guarantee that you will totally avoid it's effects ("You sold it for how much?!?  Man, I would've paid you twice that!  I was actually planning to make an offer when you got ready to get rid of it!"), you stand a small chance of redirecting the curse to it's caster (see below).  If you don't sell, you're guaranteed to find yourself in a situation where you wish you had, and soon.

2. "Driven daily for years, never had a problem with it!  Reliable and rock-solid!"

Buying an old car that has any variations of these phrases used to describe it is sure to spell doom and constant unscheduled parts store trips.  The phrases don't even have to be used, which makes this particular curse even more dangerous.  A solid, trouble-free test drive will most often work as a serviceable proxy.

3. "It shouldn't X"

The curse one casts on themselves, and also the most consistent in manifesting.  Saying this phrase while replacing 'X' with, "be too difficult", "take too long", "be hard to find a replacement for", and/or "cost that much", destroys all hope for any of those things being true.  Sadness, despair, and pain are likely to be your reward for uttering these foul words that were almost certainly put into the minds of men by the most evil of demons.

4. Broken Window Cranks

The surest sign of debilitating illness lurking within the vehicle.  Since it's all downhill from the point of that crank breaking/stripping/whatever, window crank problems should be treated as a condition that's as equally serious as a rod knock.



If you think I'm crazy now, just wait!  Here are a couple examples of common entities I recognize as bringers of pain or glory:

1. The MOLligator -

Fig. 1: MOLligatus Bargetoteus

Gentle, holy soul, blessed being, and best of friends, encountering any instance of the image of this friendly gator is assurance of success and the winds of luck blowing in your favor.  No matter the weight of the load you're carrying, this big lizard is all too happy to help and provide a hearty handshake and a smile.  Negates all curses, provides good fortune.  Will not let you down.

2. Truckula(, Curse of the) -

Fig. 2: Dumbass pseudo-fangs

The Truckula is a bastard of aggravation.  A sure sign that you are about to encounter some level of irritation, minor misfortune, or general complication of traffic, the Truckula is a creature best avoided due to this curse they indiscriminately radiate.  Their appearance is similar to what is depicted in Fig. 2, though with the cone fangs pointed downward, like. . . fangs.  Fangs for nothing, Truckula.

3. Fortune Cookie -

Fig. 3: Deliciously litigious

Luciferian sugar shell.  The fortune cookie provides a snack, but on it's terms.  Eating the cookie establishes a binding legal contract, the terms of which are printed on the bargain ribbon that the starch armor protects.  Read it before you sign, don't eat it if the fortune isn't something you agree to.

So that's a quick intro to the world as I see it.  If you're wondering why I'm sharing this, I felt the need to use far too many words to say that Eagle's window crank knob came off yesterday, and I am gravely concerned.

Back to the welder!

How do you spell "relief"? I spell it "3-2-space-O-h-m-s"

Which is probably why I never made it past the first round of any spelling bee that I participated in.

Lucky for me, I don't need to spell to use an ohmmeter.  I finally got around to checking the resistance of the sender unit I got from American Parts Depot today, and was delighted to find that they actually sell a sender that's in spec.  The empty reading was a little high at 282 Ohms or so, and full was resting neatly around 32.  Got it installed, empty and full then read about 20 Ohms lower than the out-of-tank reads, which was fine by me!

Here we are, set and happy.  I think that ring needs to be tapped a little more to get the dimples centered under the lock tabs, but I'm going to wait until the tank is secured a little better before doing that.

I also noticed something that didn't really set well with me.  Once again, chips in the POR-15 coating revealed some rust on the metal underneath.  That's a little concerning, considering this thing was shining like the sun before I slathered it in chemical nasty.  It was bone dry, all prep work done per directions, and so on.  I'm getting to the point where I don't trust this product, to be honest.

Aside from that, we had more exhaust cuts and welds to get sorted out.  I don't have time or materials to screw around with flanges for the flex sections, so I'll just deal with that when it's time to redo the exhaust at some point (hell, they'll probably need replacing by then anyway).

Test fit of the downpipes revealed some  incorrect test fitting had occurred prior to, and some drifting during assembly.  I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect to find that.  I was pleased to see that it didn't turn out to be anything requiring drastic re-measuring to correct.  I got most of the revisions made and tacked together, so that should all be squared away within the first hour of work tomorrow.

This evening brought some overdue work changing out the HID bulbs in an '08 Prius.  It took two hours.  That's the amount of time it took to fit, measure, cut, refit, cut more, grind, and weld my downpipes.  One of the $50 bulbs turned out to be dead  out of the box.  The other seems to have been mispacked and  intended for use in a lighthouse.  That's really all I have to say about that.

This'll be a real thin soup

Not a whole lot to share today, except that I got the really involved part of the exhaust finished.

I had to spend a ton of time doing the grind-and-fill routine, on account of having the "end of a spool blues", followed by the "beginning of a spool boogie."  Both arrangements really dick with my wire feed rate, which I figure is from the difference of weight on the spool at those times compared to when I last adjusted it. 

As a result, I had a ton of burn-through (though some of that was just a result of having too wide a gap between pieces), so I got to take a stroll down floorpan lane for a while, grinding away filler and replacing it so I could grind it away again.

As I was clocking out for the evening, it occurred to me that I can't just weld this whole shebang from end to end.  Even if I raised the Gremlin on the lift, the crossbars for said lift would block the pipes from being installed.  Looks like I'm going to need to fab up a few flanges.  Sure am glad I noticed that now instead of later.

All things considered, I can manage if the rest of the exhaust keeps going how it has so far.  So long as I don't get anymore spatter travelling directly down my ear canal, that is.  Chalk one up for not cleaning my ears this morning!

When you lack the knowledge, tools, and skills, you can accomplish anything

If you can honestly answer in the affirmative when asking yourself if you as a kid would like who you are as a person now, you're doing something wrong.  This is an indisputable fact, backed up by another universal truth: you were an idiot when you were a kid.  We all were.  Many of us still are.

For instance, if I were to tell my younger self that there would come a day where he would look back and seen some potential use in not dropping out of school before taking a trig course (or at least to put some measure of effort into remembering more than the most basic elements of geometry), I probably wouldn't make it through half a breath before he was walking off to go do something dumb.

Pie cuts.  That's where I'm heading with this.  Today I made pie cuts using strips of paper and without the aid of a miter, chop saw, or even a protractor worth a damn.  It wasn't too easy at first, basically because I lacked some knowledge that required a visit to internet academy.  I don't think they turned out too awful, either.  Here's a look:

I know they aren't the thin cuts you see people making for headers and turbo plumbing and all that mess.  That's because I'm not making a performance exhaust for a track car.  I'm just trying to save money because fittings that are worth buying set off my penny pincers.  Here they are tacked in place and ready for welding tomorrow:

Like I said, I didn't have the protractor at the shop.  What I ended up having to do was draw out X+Y lines on a piece of graph paper, then center the angle finder I was using for checking my pinion angle over it.  That let me mark the 7.5° point, then plot the line from the center.

I cut the paper out into a strip with the desired angle at the end, marked the lengths for each piece I'd be cutting from the pipe (first batch was 3" lengths, second was 1-1/2").  Then I marked the center down the length of the pipe on each side (so, opposite or 180° of one another).  Then I lined up the paper strip and the marks I'd made, like so (but straight).

That left me with this when I was done.

These longer ones from the first attempt were cut using my angle grinder, mainly because I've been having a hell of a time cutting tubing straight through with the portable bandsaw.  

I wasn't too impressed with the results with the grinder.  The next batch was done with the bandsaw, which actually did what I wanted it to for a change.  All of the pieces ended up being usable when I crawled under the Gremlin and started test fitting them to the downpipes.  Actually, I'm one piece short to make both of the pipes totally done and ready for final welding.  

When that's all out of the way, 75% of the exhaust work will be done.  I'm in kind of a state of disbelief, because doing the exhaust has been looming over me since I realized I wasn't going to be able to farm it out.  Can't say I mind it, though.

Breathe out. Things are in flux. It's the way of the road.

The shop water man needs to come by for a pick-up something fierce.  With my subscription container long ready for a service call, the old beverage containers are stacking up like cord wood.  Times like these make me start eyeing a more substantial solution. . .

Enough about my forgetfulness, though.  When I haven't been complaining about bad replacement parts today, I've been doing exhaust fab work.

After a few runs to O'Partsy's to make some  exchanges for the right adapters, I got prep work on said adapters, some pipe, and the side pipe inlet sections done.  The side pipe parts were the most demanding, because they are thoroughly chromed and I wanted to make sure I got every bit of that mess off my welding points before starting.

In an uncharacteristic display of regard for proper safety procedures, I actually made sure to not only keep my respirator on at all times, but I also had a big ass fan blowing smoke towards the door (though, unfortunately I would later find that it didn't actually send any of it out the door.  Guess my not noticing means the respirator works).  I also took the time to do a practice run on a couple rings I cut off from the stick of pipe I bought yesterday.

Here's the first shot:

Far from what I'd prefer, but not as bad as I expected.  Penetration left a little to be desired, though.  This was also my first chance to check out these butt weld clamps I've had for. . . Two years?  I had lost them during the time I was working on the floor, but boy, would they have been handy.  I really appreciate that they set the gap between pieces to where it needs to be and keeps it there.

I think things went better on the second attempt, both in the spatter not being so ridiculous, and how thoroughly it seems the weld penetrated this time.

Sadly, I found myself back in familiar territory once I started to work on the important stuff.  While all was weld and dandy with my butts, there was trouble to be had in my lap.  I didn't get any pictures yet, but they were a little disappointing.  Still a substantial improvement from when I last tried to weld exhaust pipe sections last winter, but the welds themselves are much more proud than I am of the result.

Either way, it works.  I think I'm doing fine, considering it's flux core wire and I'm not exactly an expert in the craft.

Get what you pay for. You know, except for when you don't.

I had a choice between which sender to buy when deciding what to replace the old one with after it relieved itself of its integrity.  I could've gone with the $150 unit from a known and well regarded parts source with an established history of providing original and repro AMC parts, or I could go with a unit sold by someone with a fairly respectable reputation on eBay for $50 less.  The way I figured it, the eBay option didn't seem too bad.  The price was in the "different supplier, lower markup" range, and it appeared to mostly match the defining details of an appropriate sender, aside from the length of the filter sock.

What I received today left me a little bit underwhelmed.  For one, there's no ground terminal on this new part.  This is a little irritating, since it means that the producers either have no idea at all about how this part actually works, or they're too cheap to provide this basic connection.  Maybe both.  Who knows?

What's more concerning is the rheostat assembly itself.  Look at this.

As I'm sure you're aware by this point, my phone camera isn't the best.  All the same, you can still see that the resistor wire is already unwinding from the board.

Don't get me wrong - I didn't have any expectations of getting a part that was the same quality as one that costs a third more.  I did, however, expect to get a unit that was worth the price I paid.  Fresh from the box, and using this means I'm back to having to repair a sender.

But wait - there's more!  Dig this.

Here we have a wire that is bent in such a way as to guarantee fitment problems, since it interferes with the flange that is supposed to seat in the fuel tank opening.  Since the ring terminal is soldered to the base of the post, using this sender means I'll need to either desolder and reposition the terminal, or loosen the post and twist the wire out of the way.  Not a serious task, but also not a task I should be bothered with after spending $100 on a sender.  Once again, does the manufacturer have a clue how this part works?  Do they care?  I think we both know the answer. . .

So now we're back in the shop, where I can take some readings with my meter.  At least it's going to be usable once these kinks get worked out.  Right?

Haha!  Nice try, buddy!  Max resistance range for this rheostat is 80 Ohms!  Empty reads 10 Ohms and full gets you just under the 80 Ohms shown above.  Meaning, they've put the older year resistance board in a '78 package.

I was grudgingly willing to fix the lack of a ground terminal, the wire wrapping, and the obstructed flange, but as we've seen so far, there's not a lot that I'm prepared to do for the incorrect resistance range.  While I may conceivably be able to rewrap the board with the resistance wire from the Dorman unit, that's going to be really fiddly work with no real demonstrated history of success on my part.  I'd also be fighting against the guide ridges in the edges of this board, since the spacing and relief is for a lower gauge wire.  That's a lot of time, effort, and expense for no guaranteed payoff.

Looking at the packaging that the part arrived in, I assume that this is an upstream problem, and not a matter of the seller trying to pull a fast one.

Having seen my fair share of boxed goodies from overseas, I imagine this is one unit from a box of many that are similarly packaged for easy distribution.  Based on that, I'm willing to give the seller the benefit of the doubt and expect that they'll be willing to handle the problem amicably.  We'll see how far that gets me.

For now, though, I'll need to get what I probably should have in the first place so I can get my car running. 

I understand the words, but I think I'm missing something

Because it sounds like good news.

I spent most of yesterday on the exhaust - cutting my downpipes, making stuff for making the mock-ups, bending brake line to make the mock up segments needed, and enjoying being under the car without having to lift it. 

Once quitting time rolled around, I figured I'd show my tender green belly and publicly post some questions on the AMC forum.  I had a number of things that I needed clarification on; basically, what was and was not important to consider for my exhaust design.  While it might be kind of embarrassing to demonstrate just how little I know about this stuff, doing things the wrong way isn't going to produce any work I can be proud of.

I'm glad I took the time to ask, because it didn't take long at all before one of the members (who I've picked up a lot of info from by just reading old posts on the forum) set me straight on a number of assumptions and misunderstandings I had that would've cost me quite a bit in time, money, and concessions of preference.  Long/short, I don't have any need to concern myself with stepping up pipe diameter, nor do I have to trouble myself with running equal lengths of pipe for each cylinder bank with a true dual setup for my configuration.

The biggest thing that I took away from the exchange was a different perspective on what I'm actually working with.  Instead of thinking of this as a single 6-cylinder engine, I should've been thinking about it as a pair of 3-cylinder engines.  I was already getting part of this when I'd initially decided on a true dual exhaust, namely how the firing order would work with cylinders 1-3 and 4-6 segmented into two groups.  A dual setup like I'm installing will have the exhaust alternating through each pipe, so each run can be viewed in isolation (more or less). 

As usual, I was making things harder for myself than I needed to.  That brings us to today, which was largely uneventful.  I spent a good amount of time sourcing and picking up materials (a 7-1/2' stick of 2" pipe from the yellow muffler place, adapters to fit to the mufflers, and a couple of flex adapters to fit to the downpipes), mostly because of how goddamned long it takes to do even the most simple tasks in this used sharps container they call a city. 

Since I haven't taken a day off in about a month, I made the decision to take a nap and eat for the remainder of the afternoon.  Better than my usual pattern of working until I get sick and collapse for a week.

Tunnels for tears, passageways of accomplishment

With the exception of the rear suspension, I feel like I've spent more time thinking about and working with plumbing for the Gremlin than I have anything else. 

When I went to O'Partsy's for the line I'd be using for the transmission return, the counter guy directed me to the back while joking that I knew more about what they have than they do.  After about 10 seconds, I had what I needed and returned to the front, explaining that the only reason I'm that familiar is because I don't have sense enough to do things right the first time.

After a trip to the hardware store for a female flare nut and a flare to NPT adapter, I got to the shop and managed to get the flare crushed on my first attempt.  I wish the same could be said for my power steering hose.  While cutting, cussing, and torching, I thought about what garbage flaring tools are (at least the sub-$100 ones I've used, but the expensive ones are probably crap, too).  I figure you probably get around 10 good flares out of a tool before something breaks, wallers, strips, or vanishes.  Luckily, only 1 or 2 of the flares I've made have been worth a damn, so I reckon mine has still got some life left.

I pulled some old 3/16" brake line out of the scrap metal pile and rolled it out straight before heading over to the transmission.  It's great material for making a mock-up, since wire coat hangers have become a rarity.  The only real problem with using it is the chance of work-hardening any sections that you need to make bends in (though that's easy enough to take care of if you want to spend a couple minutes annealing it).

In the end, the power steering hose was all taken care of, the cooler line was bent into shape, and the exhaust mock-up was started before I needed to cut out early and keep my cat company through the fireworks.  Now it's time to get back at it.

Meet the Jettisons

When you're on a ship that's going down and don't have the sense to be a rat, you might manage to wring out a few drops of time by identifying dead weight and cutting it free.  I think.  I'm not a sailor.

Point is, Santa quit without notice, so there's not going to be any sender tutorial this year, Timmy.  The real, final, actual last straw came last night, at the last step of me getting the sender done, when the tack welds that fixed the rheo backing plate to the sender body popped.  Then the whole damn thing came apart.  Again.

I decided to concede this fight to the demons Luck and Fate once I compared what it would cost me to start over again again, versus buying a '78 sender.  Maybe one day I'll get better at assessing whether or not a fight is one I'll be likely to win, but for now I've decided to pick on things smaller than me.

Don't worry, I've got a ton of happenings to keep things busy while we wait for the working sender to arrive.

I got the right oil light sender the other day, so I finished getting that stuff plumbed.

I took a minute to sweat the joints since I didn't want any of the several fittings I used vibrating loose.  I also used a little h-ightemp thread sealant at the block and senders (though not as much as the picture would make it seem).  Now I should be able to have a pressure read, an idiot light, AND an electric choke that will stop getting current when the oil's not pumping.

The exhaust work is now underway, though my plan to use PVC fittings didn't pan out.  The street elbows I got don't fit worth a damn.  That means I've been using some extra 3/16 line to do things the old-fashioned way, i.e. following the centerline the exhaust plumbing will follow.

I also began tying the trans cooler lines in (finally.  FINALLY.), though made an unpleasant discovery: the Grand Latte's return line doesn't fit.  It needs 1/4" of clearance in the trans tunnel to line up with the quick disconnect fitting, and will interfere with the shifter lever.  Somehow.  I don't know how; maybe there was some kind of revision in the valve body housing design that set things on different planes.  Maybe the line is bent.  Maybe I need to start looking for any lifeboats that may still be onboard.

13 hours in, only 35 to go

I've been told I have a talent for identifying the worst potential outcome in a situation, as well as a problem with always voicing it.  That's fine by me, at least most of the time. Though sometimes it can be a little bit of a burden.

Take yesterday, for instance: all it took to send me fleeing the shop was a little bit of zinc residue.  See, I was tack welding the fuel sender together.  I inspected one of the points I had hit and saw a canary yellow residue I'd not encountered before.  My train of thought was pretty much,

"Huh.  Interesting.  I haven't seen that before.  I wonder what I just made.

WAIT. 

I HAVEN'T SEEN THAT BEFORE.

I WONDER WHAT THE HELL ELSE I JUST MADE."

At that point, I flew out of the shop like a hurricane while holding my breath (after fumbling with the hook latch that secures the doors, of course).

Now, I was pretty confident I was fine, and nothing dangerous was released.  I thought, "The bad shit gets made when chlorinated hydrocarbons are hit with high current/heat/UV.  You're fine."  Then I thought about the flux I had used to desolder the sender parts and realized that I may have had a weld point that was contaminated (despite cleaning the hell out of everything.  In my experience, once flux heats up, it's like trans fluid and goes wherever it wants).

Hoping to convince myself that all was well, I looked up the MSDS for the flux I used.

"Oh, okay.  Zinc chloride.  Yellow, zinc.  No prob.  

WAIT.

ZINC. 

CHLORIDE.

WHERE THE HELL DID THE CHLORINE GO, AND WHAT DID IT DO WHEN IT TOOK OFF FROM THE ZINC?!?!"

Panicked research ensued for the next 45 minutes or so, while I desperately tried to find something that would explain whether or not I was about to die a horrible death.  Being far from even a remedial level study of chemistry, I looked in the hopes of finding something that would confirm or deny my fears being warranted.  I found nothing.

Eventually, I decided there were two ways to take that lack of discovery: 'yes, you're doomed.  You're not finding anything because nobody has been dumb enough to put themselves in the situation where the question had to be asked', or 'nah, you're good.  You're not finding anything because there's nothing to find'.

I decided to go with the latter, partly because it made me feel better, and partly because it doesn't really matter.  I mean, even if I did get my trench warfare on, what the hell is anyone gonna do about it anyway?  It's not like there's an antidote or anything.

I feel fine, not even any freak out "are you sure this feeling is normal?" kind of stuff.  While that's generally all I'd need to put any concerns to rest, thing about that kind of poisoning is that it can take 48 hours for symptoms to manifest (or longer, sometimes).  I'll start to worry if I start coughing up strawberry yogurt, but for now I have work to do.

Enough about my neurosis, though.  Let's take a look at the sender!  Here's the sender components, ready for desoldering:

And here's everything all reassembled and tacked together.  I realize the welds look like total garbage, but give me a break.  I was wearing a mask with a lense so dark that I literally could not see my hand in front of my face.  I think I did pretty good, considering I was shooting blind.

Oh, I have the radiator in place, too.  It's not final, since a hole needs to be realigned and the brackets painted to keep them from rusting off, but I'm doing that when I paint the exhaust.

Okay.  Got to get this sender done before I hit my deadline.